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I've been reading and thinking a lot about what's been happening on #mastodon around questions and issues of #racism, #moderation, #contentwarnings, etc. I have a few thoughts. First, I'm old. I mean OLD. My first internet experiences were as an adult academic in the mid-late 80s. As a Black person (and at the time, a woman) it was not unusual to be met with micro-agressions, harassment, and incredulity when I was online. Thus, I have never expected, nor found, truly safe space online. 1/ 15 comments
But here we are, Muskyman has created a situation of urgency, and this has to be dealt with. So... 1) If you are white, please shut up when #BIPOC folks talk about their experiences. Just fucking listen. Don't explain, or minimize, or ask for proof or examples. We are the ones who are targeted. 2) There definitely isn't a #BIPOC consensus about the use of CWs for #racism. If you are white, and don't want to see racism, do some self-examination. You are not the target. 3/ 3) Some of the solutions to this issue will be technical, and some won't be. Don't jump to the conclusion that this is solved already by the systems currently in place. They are amazing, and I know they were designed by marginalized folks, but those folks were largely white, so there are blind spots. 4) Remember to breathe.  @pearlbear thanks so much for this. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of people think that the fragmentary nature of the fediverse's servers absolves the superstructure of responsibility. People resort to responding to posts about racism with "just block the server" and "that's the great thing about mastodon, you can choose where to go" which is a bit like telling someone to get their coffee at a less racist cafe. I think people not doing that would make for a promising start.  @rustyniall @pearlbear racism shouldn’t exist, but the wording here seems to call for some sort of central mechanism to allow the “superstructure” to purge itself of racism Mastodon draws on a legacy of conflict between open communities and corporate control, and thinking about decentralised infrastructure. It’s not clear there’s a better way to purge racists in a decentralised way than what Mastodon implements, but I’d be interested if there was. @daskeit @pearlbear I wasn't calling for a central mechanism, I was calling for people, especially white people, to be more thoughtful in how they respond to POC when they speak about racism here. @pearlbear @rustyniall that’s fair, my bad! There’s a lot going on with the Twitter exodus so I’m a bit primed to see different cultural norms clashing @pearlbear I’ve been thinking about this because I’m used to queer folk here cw-ing transphobic content (reports of transphobia, that is) so that we can engage with it on our own terms and not be beat over the head with it when we need a break. But maybe it’s different because such a large percentage of the population here is queer so there’s more of a sense that everyone agrees so we don’t feel we’re being silenced, just protecting each other from over exposure. |
Gregory's Server
That said, I have found, and relish, safer spaces. And I have tried to work toward fostering those spaces. I was on #mastodon in 2018, but spent little time here, primarily because few of my peeps were here. But I did enjoy browsing, and I also did notice how white it was.
I wish that we had not spent so much investment in corporate social media so that these conversations could have happened earlier. They might have been able to have been addressed more fully with some spaciousness. 2/